The European Commission gave a first positive assessment on Wednesday 29 July of how Member States have made use of the flexibilities introduced by the Coronavirus Response Investment Initiative (CRII) to mobilise the cash reserves available in European structural and investment funds (see EUROPE 12446/2).
With the exception of Austria, all Member States, as well as the United Kingdom, have so far made use of or plan to make use of the flexibilities established by the first CRII proposal adopted on 30 March (see EUROPE 12457/18).
In addition, 18 countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Greece, Spain, France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and the United Kingdom) have adapted their cohesion policy programmes to take account of the consequences of the coronavirus, for a total of 88 programme modifications.
According to the Commission’s interim assessment, these flexibilities, combined with changes in the Commission’s internal procedures to speed up the processing of applications, have made it possible to mobilise vast cohesion policy resources to tackle the coronavirus crisis “with unprecedented speed”.
“The results we are publishing today show that the Coronavirus Response Investment Initiative packages are a much needed help for our Member States”, said the European Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms, Elisa Ferreira.
The Commission is expected to publish a more comprehensive report on the results of the CRII and CRII+ packages in October 2020.
See the fact sheet published by the Commission: https://bit.ly/3hK7x2c (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)